Public Interest Report: October 2015
Creating a Community for Global Security
by Charles D. Ferguson
The Iran Deal: A Pathway for North Korea?
by Manit Shah and Jose Trevino
The majority of all nuclear experts and diplomats, as well as aspiring nuclear and policy students, must have their eyes set on North Korea’s slowly but steadily expanding nuclear weapons program, as well as the recent updates on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran.
A Social Science Perspective on International Science Engagement
by Nasser Bin Nasser
Social and behavioral sciences play an increasingly critical part in issues as far ranging as arms control negotiations, inspection and verification missions, and cooperative security projects.
Review of Benjamin E. Schwartz’s Right of Boom: The Aftermath of Nuclear Terrorism (Overlook Press, 2015)
by Edward A. Friedman
While capturing the mystery of the weapon’s origin, the title does little to convey the enormity or complexity of the issue being addressed.
Marshall and the Atomic Bomb
by Frank Settle
Marshall is best known today as the architect of the plan for Europe’s recovery in the aftermath of World War II—the Marshall Plan. He also earned acclaim as the master strategist of the Allied victory in World War II. Last but not least of his responsibilities was the production of the atomic bomb.
Rob Goldston: A Scientist on the Cutting Edge of Fusion and Arms Control Research
by Allison Feldman
An interview with a leading researcher in plasma physics and fusion energy and former director of the DOE Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), 1997 – 2009.
Not Much Below the Surface? North Korea’s Nuclear Program and the New SLBM
by Robert Schmucker, Markus Schiller and J. James Kim
In May 2015, only a month after key figures in the U.S. military publicly acknowledged the possibility that North Korea has perfected the miniaturization of a nuclear warhead for long-range delivery, the secretive country seems to have confirmed these claims with a series of announcements, including a “successful” submarine launched ballistic missile (SLBM) test at sea.
Nuclear War, Nuclear Winter, and Human Extinction
by Steven Starr
While it is impossible to precisely predict all the human impacts that would result from a nuclear winter, it is relatively simple to predict those which would be most profound. That is, a nuclear winter would cause most humans and large animals to die from nuclear famine in a mass extinction event similar to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs.
A military depot in central Belarus has recently been upgraded with additional security perimeters and an access point that indicate it could be intended for housing Russian nuclear warheads for Belarus’ Russia-supplied Iskander missile launchers.
The Indian government announced yesterday that it had conducted the first flight test of its Agni-5 ballistic missile “with Multiple Independently Targetable Re-Entry Vehicle (MIRV) technology.
While many are rightly concerned about Russia’s development of new nuclear-capable systems, fears of substantial nuclear increase may be overblown.
Despite modernization of Russian nuclear forces and warnings about an increase of especially shorter-range non-strategic warheads, we do not yet see such an increase as far as open sources indicate.